David Naylor

David Naylor, more commonly known as DaveN, started working in the SEO industry in it's infancy, starting with three major corporations releasing their database driven data, creating internal link structures and improving usability.

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25 Comments

rishil - http://designer-watches.org

Were you logged in or out?

malcolm coles - http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk

Google maps does my head in.
Do this search for hotels near clavering. Click on C. Then Click on the URL given which is theyewtree.net. Which is the URL for a hotel more than 100 miles away to the west of London.

jaamit - http://www.freshegg.com

Another interesting case of UK searchers being fed US results. The longer Google keep neglecting the glaring problems in UK results the bigger the danger of losing their faithful 90% market share. If Bing were clever they’d roll out the full version in the UK now, they could really perform a coup in winning over UK searchers…

Paul - http://www.northsouthmedia.co.uk/

get the exact same thing for ‘driving lessons irvine’ on the #7th organic listing – I knew Irvine (Scotland) was trying to twin with Irvine (California, US) but this is taking it a tad too far.

maurice - http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/

I saw some wierdness staying in blackpool last week – search for “imperial hotel blackpool” and google maps returns multiple locations for the imperial.

NB the imperal is the best known htel in Blackpool (its where the party laeders stay during conferece season)

ThePost

Googlemaps has a known issue with its data providers for some post code areas in the UK. I have a directory with Googlemaps which can be embarrassing. Should ditch it really.

DaveN

@malcolm coles thats just spam lol

malcolm coles - http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk

@Dave. Which way? Is Marco Pierre White dropping misleading google local entries all over the country?!? Or are the other lot attempting to pretend to be him?!

I think it’s more c*ck up – the other yew tree (PR0) is here: http://www.theyewtreeinn.com, but they’re really hard to find in google … (try searching for theyewtreeinn and Google tries to correct you to MPW’s place.)

Dudibob

I’m seeing that more and more how US things have dominance even in the .co.uk listings. Lancaster is a real bad one for this too.

@malcolm Ooooo. I live just down the road from Clavering in a little town called Bishops Stortford. Isn’t that funny 🙂

mark. chapman - http://www.fuseo.co.uk

hi dave,

I’ve been claiming a few Google maps / business listings for clients lately. Rather than drone on being diplomatic trying to explain everything, suffice to say Google maps must be considered a terrible experience in terms of ‘customer service’. I like to call it a ‘manana’ kind of thing as they say in Spain – it’ll be done ‘tomorrow’… only tomorrow never seems to come 🙂

For a start, no-one at Google has answered my queries (not that I, deep down, expected them to). I reckon I might get more help from this blog (which says a great deal about Google maps service, doesn’t it?).

At this moment I can see it is currently ‘merging’ (as Google maps describes the process), merging with a previous entry.

Hey, you might say, it’s not merging – but that just highlights my point about this quite odd process. Does anyone know when and how the merge will be successful? Having been through this process before, it still feels like a leap in the dark when you do it. Will it work? Who knows! If I ran a directory service like this, I’d soon be fired!

I don’t want to make this post a long one. But one has to ask: how can this type of updating be considered a great way for businesses, that aim to be efficient and effective, to keep accurate map / business locations info on the Internet? (And I know we can start talking about algorithms and maybe SEO here – but that’s not my point).

Apparently this chap, Joel Headley, (in the US of course) is now working on Google maps for us all. Anyone know him? Does he talk and help you at all? Not me he hasn’t anyway.

I’ll stop there – don’t want to be known as the ‘angry young (seo) man’ about Google maps 🙂

To be honest, I do smile at the whole thing and can’t criticise Google for what they run etc, but Google maps… there must be an easier way 🙂

mark.

Shan - http://www.edotsindia.com

May be a few errors like this. I am sure GOOGLE will fix them soon.

SEO in Ripon - pingback

[…] did a post today about Google Maps getting it wrong which made me start to have a look at these local type […]

mark - http://freeiphone3gs.blogspot.com

Did you try that same search directly on the maps search box too?

Amelia Vargo

Google maps is a mystery. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t! But the value of using it (when it behaves as you would expect) makes it worthwhile. I just wish they’d iron out the issues.

have refresh the page by pressing ctrl + f5? sometime the cookies can be bother

mark. chapman - http://www.fuseo.co.uk

| Shan said: “May be a few errors like this. I am sure GOOGLE will fix them soon.”

Well, maybe they will – but Google isn’t communicating too well that they will.

Lancaster SEO - http://www.webtalentseo.com

google still a lot of things to fix up..

Efusjon

One day Google maps (or Yahoo Maps or Mapquest, etc.) will give someone the wrong directions and they’ll end up in the ad part of town and something will happen and then a lawsuit will result in millions awarded. I just see it coming like McDonalds hot coffee.

[…] the point in his video explaining .com sites and UK results. (And apologies to Dave Naylor whose post about this I actually commented on 2 months ago but completely forgot I’d […]

Turdle

Since a few weeks neither Google’s Android weather service nor Google Maps can distinguish betweem HaMburg, Germany and HaRburg Germany, or the weather widget categorizes my location as “Germany”. Is GWB now working for Google?

Turdle

Erm…sheesh… Google Street View that is…not Google Maps 🙂

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